Exploring basic school teachers’ implementation of national values and social and emotional learning (SEL) in Ghana: A case study of Cape Coast basic schools

This study explored how basic school teachers in Cape Coast, Ghana, conceptualize and implement national values and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) within the Standards-Based Curriculum. The study adopted a qualitative case study design and purposively selected 10 teachers from five public basic schools across the OLA and Aboom Circuits of the Cape Coast Metropolis. Data were generated through a semi-structured interview guide and structured non-participant observation and analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2022) thematic analysis framework. The study found that basic school teachers in Cape Coast conceptualize national values primarily in behavioural and disciplinary measures rather than as civic ideals requiring deliberate moral reasoning. Their understanding of SEL was largely intuitive and experience-driven, with most teachers unable to ground their practice in any formal framework. Critically, the majority conflated national values and SEL, treating them as interchangeable constructs, which undermined the intentionality that effective implementation demands. In practice, both constructs were enacted incidentally, woven into routine classroom activities without explicit learning objectives. Classroom management and discipline served as the dominant vehicle for values education, while assessment remained informal, undocumented, and unsystematic. At the contextual level, large class sizes, curriculum coverage pressures, inadequate professional development, and inconsistent institutional support collectively constrained meaningful implementation, leaving it heavily dependent on individual teacher initiative. The study concludes that a fundamental misalignment exists between curriculum intent and classroom enactment, attributable to conceptual ambiguity and insufficient pedagogical guidance. It recommends sustained, practice-oriented professional development, development of context-specific instructional and assessment tools, active school leadership involvement, and structural improvements in classroom conditions to bridge the gap between policy expectations and implementation realities.